Keeping battered women safe during welfare reform: new challenges

This paper reviews the growing body of research literature on the relationship of domestic violence to welfare. Not only do women on welfare suffer from domestic violence in far greater numbers than women in the general population, but their abusers, threatened by the women's efforts at education, training, or work, also use violence and threats of violence to sabotage these efforts at economic self-sufficiency. For this reason, welfare reform exacerbates domestic violence in the lives of many low-income women. As a result of the federal Family Violence Option, most state welfare plans allow battered women on welfare more time and specialized services before mandating work in order to keep them and their children safe. Recent research and monitoring have shown, however, that the majority of battered women on welfare do not tell their welfare workers about the violence. Ending the isolation of these battered women and helping them with domestic violence services pose difficult challenges. Women's health providers may be in a better position to accomplish this task than welfare department personnel.